TWO Spaces are better than one!

A hotly debated topic

In light of Microsoft’s announcement that henceforth MS Word will auto correct the spaces between sentences to one space, we want to address this wrong-headed decision with a blog that we were getting ready to post.  Microsoft is just plain wrong.

The country seems divided on pretty much every issue.  The question of how many spaces to use after a sentence is no exception.

Skidmore College sought to answer the question once and for all with a recent study titled, “Are Two Spaces Better Than One?  The Effect of Spacing Following Periods and Commas During Reading.”  (Yes, we too were happy that a prestigious academic institution took the time to study this situation!)

According to the study, two spaces after a sentence increased reading speed by 3% as compared to only one space.  That’s a whopping nine additional words per minutes.  Although it appears to be a small difference, the benefit across all of the books, emails, documents that you read over your lifetime is enormous.  For those of you who move your lips when you read, this benefit remains dubious at best.

The study also found that two spaces improved reading comprehension and fluency. Rebecca Johnson, associate professor at Skidmore who led the study, told the The Atlantic, “Our data suggests that all readers benefit from having two spaces after periods.”  No more calls please.  We have a winner!

There you have it, scientific proof that two spaces are better than one!  Hopefully, it will be enough to the settle the debate once and for all (and convince email newsletter sites and social media sites and job posting sites to stop auto-correcting to one space!)